For the first time in 5+ years, houses where I live are staying on the market for more than 2 days. . .and they’re staying on the market for more than a month. I mean, it went from Red Hot to ice cold in a snap.
www.thehousingbubbleblog.com has lots of fun stories and good articles to pick over. Sales were down in June (which I think was a drop in 8 of the last 10 months). Median prices are dropping. Builders are offering plasma TVs, cars, and closing costs. . .desparate moves to keep prices propped up. Who does that appeal to, the guy who says “Gee, I’d like a $500,000 house and a $2000 TV, but I just can’t swing it. Oh, you’re going to throw the TV in? Where do I sign?”
Interest rates are higher now. Some of the ARMs and Interest Only Loans that people used to get into houses they couldn’t afford are starting to come due and the worst case scenarios for these people are happening: higher interest rates and lower home values. The double whammy!!!
The job market still is all right, but if that slows, you’ve got the Perfect Storm, son.
Me, I don’t care. My house is what I live in and I got it well before any of the run-ups started. Price drops should actually help with my taxes and if things really hit bottom, shit. . .I might just buy me another one. But it’s going to be interesting to watch. Why buy now? Tons of homes on the market. Buyers have sellers over a barrel.
The northern Minneapolis burb I moved into in 2001 was red hot when I bought.
You basically had to make an offer the same day if you liked a house or it would be gone the next day. Everyone was getting pretty much what they were asking and I went through quite a few houses that were being sold “as-is”.
Now 5 years later the same houses have went up in value 30-50k. But no ones buying. There are quite a few homes in my area for sale (many for months) and all I can figure is they are being foreclosed on. Too many people bought in with an adjustable rate mortgage and now are getting hit with the higher payments.
It’s totally a buyers market right now and if you want to sell you better fix the place up real nice and drop the price way down.
Nashville didn’t participate in the massive upswing in housing prices these last five years. That’s largely because there’s so much new housing going up in the 'burbs. It seems like they build a new subdivision in Brentwood every week. Soon there won’t be an acre of open space between here and Franklin. Similar things are happening on the north and east sides of town. The only place where prices truly skyrocketed is in the enclave around Vanderbilt University, where some 2,000-footers are selling for $400,000. Myself, I’m still renting. I found a real, honest-to-goodness one-bedroom apartment just five blocks from campus for just $575 a month. The complex has a laundry room, a swimming pool, lots of parking, and good security.
A friend of my recently moved up to Fargo, North Dakota. He says that he could get a four-bedroom house for $125,000! Small apartments go for $200 a month up there.
What is a buyer’s responsibility if they’re foreclosed on?
I get that if you sell it at a loss, you’re still on the hook for the difference (basically an unsecured loan).
But, if you get foreclosed, does it just destroy your credit? Does the bank just take it from you and try to sell it, and what’s going to happen to the lenders who get stuck (maybe) with a glut of houses?
I live in St. Paul, MN and I’ve been trying to sell my house since April. It SUCKS. There is a 7-month supply of housing on the market right now.
When I bought the house 4 years ago, it was completely a seller’s market, with housese staying up for sale for a week at longest, usually hours. I know that the people I bought it from made $100,000 on it. I’ll be lucky to break even, considering the improvement projects I’ve poured into it. Ugh.
Meanwhile, my mom works for a real estate office in the Seattle area, where things have yet to slow down a jot, and records are still being broken. It’s such a completely different scene that it’s a little mind-boggling. I’d like to move back there someday, but I don’t know how I’ll be able to afford housing there when I won’t have a nest egg created by my housing here. Ugh again.
Things have slowed down 'round here, but no bursting in sight. Houses are still going for asking price in most cases, although it’s taking a little longer.
The housing market is still hot here. We’re close enough to the Alberta oil boom that it’s not likely to cool off any time soon, though it’s nothing like the market in Calgary or Edmonton or Ft McMurray.
I’ve noticed a slowdown, but I’m still pretty safe because of my location being very convenient and schools excellent. Here, houses seem to be taking a month to sell and the sale prices look to be in the neighborhood of 3% off the asking prices. (Isn’t that, like, normal?)
I figure it’s mostly house flippers and ARM/no-interest suckers losing at this point. I’ve been in my house long enough so that a 50% hit wouldn’t put me upside down. However the economic circumstances that would cause that steep of a drop would likely be way worse than the home devaluation itself.
I saw a report a few days ago about a big slowdown in Loudon county. I know a couple people from Alexandria and they think it’s looking like a downturn. Some guys say they’ve seen stuff on the market since January, and one guy said that there are 14 condos in his complex for sale whereas a year ago, there would be 1 or 2.
Honestly, prices haven’t really dropped in my neighborhood, so I can’t say that anything has popped, but I can say that houses AREN’T SELLING. They’re just sitting there. And who’s going to buy into that? At some point, people are going to have to start asking less.
Stuff in my neighborhood seems to be on the market longer but they are still selling. The only place that has lingered for ages is the rundown dump with structural damage whose owner is asking for way too much money. My neighborhood has a lot of restaurants opening up as well as other things and it looks like we are getting a new supermarket as well so that will probably keep prices from dropping too much.
House prices are through the roof in Asheville. It’s a combination of factors: 1) not a lot of flat land, 2) absolutely gorgeous place to live, and 3) tons of retirees and second-home buyers for whom cost is not an issue. We bought our house 3 years ago and I’m so glad we did, because we couldn’t afford to buy now. Affordable housing is a big political issue locally, since wages are so low and housing prices are so high. (The tourist industry is the biggest game in town, and it doesn’t pay well.)
There’s an average of 100 people moving here per DAY - those folks need places to live, so there you go.
I could sell my place for about 2.5 times what I paid for it. Of course, I couldn’t afford to buy anything else, so I’d be living in a card-board box with lots of $$ in the bank. You think I’m kidding, but there was a story in the news this AM about construction workers making between $24 and $38 per hour, unable to find housing they could actually pay for.
Things here in Hyattsville are still creeping up. Houses are staying on the market longer, but Prince George’s county has historically been undervalued, so there’s a way to go before they top out. In addition, there is a LOT of new construction going on around here, including about 350,000 square feet of retail that will contain a 14-screen movie theater and a huge high-end grocery store. According to the good folks at Zillow the value of my house has gone up about 18% so far this year.
Actually, that article I recently read about dropping prices in VA indicated that PG County was one of the couple local counties that was increasing.
This is the entry about the Commerce Department’s report on home sales with all the bubble snipers chiming in, some indicating that in real dollars, and figuring in incentives, median prices actually fell from June 2005 to June 2006.
I live around Lafayette, Indiana. The worst area for real estate in the country. I bought a house 2 years ago and it hasn’t appreciated a penny, according to Zillow. That is the rule here, not the exception. This is due to lots of overbuilding by builders who appear to have 2 of the county commissioners in their pocket.
A local land use commission has come out with reports stating that the housing glut is driving down everyone’s prices and will result in a ghetto in the middle of the city were only renters will live. (Because anyone who can afford to buy is buying up the cheap new stuff outside the city limits).
There are people here who buy the slap dash crap being built right now who find it appraised under the selling price the day the buy it.
Lucky for me - after living in the house for a year I decided I liked it enough to want to live in it after my kids moved away and thus 1) switched from a cheapo ARM to a regular old fashioned fixed rate mortgage and 2) hope to wait out the slump so that when I do sell it I make some money.
Can I talk about housing at my Uni? At Gatech, they had over 400 more freshman than they expected, so they are scrambling to find housing for them all. In a few dorms, instead of 2 people per room there are now 3. In some lounges, they have created massive 8 to 9 people hippie communes. And yet they still need to find more housing.
I’m not sure what kind of market you would call that, besides maybe an insane one.
The housing market here has definitely slowed down. I live south about 30 miles southeast of Seattle.
Homes have most definitely appreciated in value and I know I couldn’t afford to buy my home now. However, all that being said, it has definitely become a BUYER’S market down here.
Where home were once selling in a matter of days, they are sitting on the market for months. My neighbor tried selling his home and ended up having to rent it out because he couldn’t keep paying on TWO mortgages. The home he tried selling is only three years old. Our homes are nice homes, with good square footage and well built.
My father has had his home up for a few months now too. A beautiful home, looks over the water, definitely higher end. He hasn’t sold it yet either.
The area I live in has most definitely become over-built. There appears to be a GLUT of homes on the market now. Many, many are brand spanking new homes, and just sit there.
The Denver area didn’t partake in the housing frenzy of the last few years either. The boom period here was in the '90’s, and when the tech/telecom bust hit in 2000/2001, it hit really hard. While other areas boomed, we mostly treaded water for a few years. Prices just started rising again in the last year or so.
There are two houses for sale in my small neighborhood, and there asking roughly 10% more than they would have last year. Another house sold in about a week for the asking price.
In the last few years, the low interest rates spurred a big jump in first-time home buyers. A lot of them overextended to make the buy, and now they’re in a squeeze. They have to get rid of a house they can’t quite afford, just as the market slows down. I don’t have official figures, but I’m seeing more houses being sold at auction and marked “foreclosure” than ever in my memory. I also see houses that go through 2 or 3 realtors before finally finding a buyer.
Fortunately, the explosion in prices that happened elsewhere was much more subdued here, so there’s not as far to fall.
I think a lot of the foreclosures are on people who stretched themselves to buy the house, weren’t educated enough to realize you property taxes go up every year as well as interest on an adjustable rate mortgage.
So those with a P&I payment + tax escrow that were paying $1035 a month at 4.25% are now having to come up with a payment around $1370.